There are those who claim hockey’s unwritten code was violated on Sunday night, when the Buffalo Sabres lined up a six-foot-eight galoot with intent to assault a Maple Leafs all-star.

Wendel Clark is not one of those people.

“There’s no such thing as a code,” Clark, the Maple Leafs great, was saying this week. “You do what you have to do to win. Each player has to do what he thinks he has to do. But there’s no code.”

Clark, speaking in an interview in the days after Sunday’s brawl, wasn’t attempting to suggest that the NHL isn’t home to a wide variety of violence both random and well considered. Teammates defend teammates. Brawn begets brawn. Fighters nudge fighters to mutually remove each other’s helmets to avoid league sanction. What Clark was saying is that none of those events are overseen by some ancient blood covenant secretly shared among players. The actions on the ice, in Clark’s view, are governed by the same thing that governs almost everything in pro sports — specifically, by individual self interest, mostly as it relates to earning a paycheque.

Designated fighters like Scott, for instance, often make in the range of $50,000 (all figures U.S.) in the minors or something closer to $1 million in the NHL.

“Guys like that are not going to follow a code,” Clark said. “They’re going to do what they need to do for themselves to stay in the NHL.”

So what did Clark make of the actions of David Clarkson, the marquee free-agent signing of Toronto’s offseason who earned a 10-game suspension for leaping over the boards to join the melee? He wasn’t defending a code. He was showing “he cares.”

“If he didn’t care, we’d be in trouble. It’s a good thing he cares,” Clark said. “We’re judging the big picture here, and there’s no doubt his heart’s in the right place.”

Locating the whereabouts of Clarkson’s head is another matter altogether. From the outset of the pre-season he’s appeared desperate to justify his massive new contract, which will pay him $36.75 million over seven years. Clarkson has been throwing his body around with abandon, punishing opponents, partaking in inconsequential scrums — doing things smart veterans generally avoid until the games begin to count.

Certainly Clark knows what it’s like to be new in Toronto and intent on nailing everything in shoulder pads. And perhaps Clarkson, who grew up idolizing Clark, could learn a thing or two by listening to an anecdote from Clark’s mid-1980s beginnings in the league.

“After my first year, year and a half in the league, a very old guy told me, ‘Son, you’ve got to pick spots,’” said Clark.

The “old guy” was a fellow Saskatchewan native named Gordie Howe.

“He just said, ‘It looks good now. But you’ve got to pick your spots and look after yourself. Do it on your terms. Don’t do it on anyone else’s terms. You’re the one that has to last.’ That’s where the idea of a code isn’t good, either.”

The idea of the code is preposterous enough that even those with obvious interests in maintaining its mystique have been laying it to waste.

As Calgary Flames enforcer Brian McGrattan said recently: “I don’t even know if there really is a code anymore.”

Added ex-Leaf Jay Rosehill in an interview with Comcast Sportsnet in Philadelphia: “The code is changing. The rules are different. I know coaches recently say, ‘Go after their skill.’ That is the mentality and that will keep (happening) because if two tough guys fight each other, what does that matter?”

Rosehill’s words are concerning in a league that refuses to do much to protect its skill from the skull-crushing whims of its criminal fringe. Mind you, you could consider it a step in the correct direction that Kessel received a toothless three pre-season-game suspension for chopping Scott’s lower extremities with his carbon-fibre blade on Sunday night. If the league won’t make targeting star players a non-starter, allowing the stars to defend themselves by any means necessary is one way of policing the problem, albeit a perverted one.

But Clarkson should take note. If it’s now standard practice to target skill, Clarkson is both skilled enough and reactionary enough to be an easy mark. And if the 27-year-old Clarkson is intent on being his team’s superhero this season, there’s a 46-year-old man of hard-won wisdom who can tell him nobody’s a Man of Steel.

“As a player you’ve got to say, ‘I’ve got to be smarter here. Maybe I do it in the playoffs. Maybe I do it when an opportunity really presents itself or we need a momentum change in a game,’” Clark said. “But you can’t do it every single shift. Because nobody’s body will last. It’s impossible.’”

Clark, whose career was often interrupted by contact-induced injury, wasn’t questioning Clarkson’s 10-game leap over the boards; he said he isn’t in the business of judging players from the comfort of his couch. But Toronto’s former No. 17 did suggest fans give its current No. 71 some leeway to “find himself” after having spent a half-dozen seasons with the New Jersey Devils.

“He’s going to do some real positive things and maybe some negative things as he’s trying to feel himself out to see what the roles are here,” Clark said. “Probably the first 40 games guys will be figuring out what their roles are. You get told them by the coach, but as the team gets together you grow into them as well.”

Clark, as an aside, said he never once jumped off a bench to brawl, a fact that may surprise those who envision him as an extremist who never met a confrontation he didn’t relish. It’s a common misperception. The rose-coloured glasses of memory tell us Wayne Gretzky doled out multiple seeing-eye assists every night (even though he averaged 1.32 a game), that Tiger Williams rode his stick after every goal (even though he only did it once), and that Clark unleashed a vicious body check or traded blood-splattering haymakers on every shift of his 793-game run in the league. But those are career-highlight-reel flashbacks, which are far different from the real-time reality of any given hockey life.

“You watch Scott Stevens on a half-hour reel of his 22-year career, everybody thinks Scott Stevens threw three (devastating) hits a game. Well, he really didn’t,” Clark said. “Scott wasn’t overly physical every single night. You can’t play like that every single night. Even if you’re on the giving end, your body won’t stay together.”

Will the Leafs stay together now that Clarkson, brought in as a dressing-room leader, has been reduced to a cheerleader? There is no time-honoured code or equation to make sense of how a team will respond to such an absence. But Clark said he wouldn’t be surprised if a brawl that reaped suspensions also brings benefits by extension.

“Rather than judge it harshly right now, wait until you see the circumstances. All the guys may rally around what you’re trying to build. And maybe they get stronger because of this,” Clark said. “(With Clarkson out) you’re definitely not as talented, because you lost a talented guy. But as a group, if they become tighter and closer and all that stuff you really want as a team, all of that means a lot more than any individual playing well for 10 games.”

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